Grandstands only half full of fans at Fontana

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FONTANA  The idea was to make Jimmie Johnson “into a superstar.” To tap the driver’s regional ties to help fill the grandstands at Auto Club Speedway.

Superstardom, it turns out, was the easy part.

“He helped us out by accomplishing this incredible thing of winning four (NASCAR) championships,” Speedway President Gillian Zucker said yesterday. “He’s made it pretty easy. He did it himself and we’re tagging along after him.”

There’s a growing disconnect between the sustained dominance of El Cajon’s leadfooted legend-in-the-making and the dwindling crowds at the track nearest his roots, a disconnect dramatized by Johnson’s victory in yesterday’s half-filled Auto Club 500.

The victory was Johnson’s fifth at the Fontana track, and brought his career total into numerical symmetry with his wheels: No. 48. Yet while Johnson said he ran short of passes for his San Diego County constituents, the official crowd estimate of 72,000 must have been based on a count of eyeballs.

Auto Club Speedway is built to hold 92,000. If there were any more than 50,000 people on the premises, they must have been huddled beneath the stands in an attempt to stay warm or in line for an autograph from Chargers linebacker Shawne Merriman, who announced his presence via Twitter.

Paid to provide positive spin, Zucker invoked macroeconomic excuses about once every two sentences during her midrace media debriefing and vowed to “be fighting tooth and nail” to keep the track’s two NASCAR races. Still, entire sections of empty seats — both yesterday and at last October’s Pepsi 500 — would seem to suggest saturation.

“All tracks are not equal,” Zucker argued. “If you’re at a track that holds 50,000 people and sells out, is that better than a track that holds 92,000 and is growing? I don’t think it is.”

Maybe not if the track that holds 92,000 is really growing. But with Inland Empire unemployment hovering around 14 percent, with February racing susceptible to lousy weather and with competing tracks angling for more dates, Fontana’s ability to preserve its two-race package might be as challenging as chasing Jimmie Johnson on a tricycle.

Kansas Speedway recently gained approval for a casino component. Though that track, like Auto Club Speedway, is owned by International Speedway Corporation, NASCAR may decide it has better growth opportunities on the prairie.

“Attendance and viewership has been, obviously, a hot topic,” Johnson acknowledged. “I don’t know what else we can do in the garage area to make it more entertaining. I mean, the cars are as equal as they’ve ever been. The racing has been awesome ...

“I don’t know why people are doing different things. It’s not only our sport, but all sports. Then, when you turn the television on, people aren’t watching TV as much anymore. I don’t have the answer. I wish I knew.”